PROJECTS

AGADAPT: Adapting water use in the agriculture sector

PROJECT TYPE

Innovation project – Develops and brings to market climate-relevant knowledge, products and services

LOCATION

Pan-European project, managed from France

START DATE
April 2011
LEAD PARTNER

INRA 

PROJECT MANAGER

André Chanzy: achanzy@avignon.inra.fr

THEME

Sustainable Land Use

PARTNERS
Suez EnvironnementTNOForschungszentrum Jülich GmbHMétéo-FranceAlterra Wageningen UR, WageningenEcole des Mines de ParisCommissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA, Saclay)Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain (UPV)

Global warming puts high pressure on fresh water availability and is changing the components of the fresh water system. Access to fresh water is a crucial issue for many societies: Mediterranean territories already face water scarcity and Northern European territories are increasingly exposed.

AGADAPT develops and deploys methods to reduce and optimize the water usage of rainfed and irrigated agriculture by combining knowledge-based innovative technologies, modelling and transfer of technologies and innovative practices

AGADAPT includes:

*A demonstrator of a decision support software for the estimation of field scale irrigation needs and water demand at both field scale (irrigation scheduling) and regional scale (infrastructure, environmental impact)

*A detailed assessment of reuse water schemes management for different regions in Europe with identification of technical,economical and social constraints which will also be increasingly exposed to water scarcity.

In the agriculture sector, farmers are already affected by water restrictions or will most probably be affected in a near future. Deficits in water supply result from the conjunction of a precipitation decrease, an increase in the climatic evaporative demand and an increasing water demand of other sectors (urban, industry). There is a need of improving irrigation scheduling tools to optimize the water use efficiency. Tools such as AGADAPT can be disseminated directly to farmers or through farmers organizations.